Follow my journey from Greece to Sweden and my quest for happiness, starting August 23rd 2014.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Ekonomikum and Catwalks

For those
of you who don’t know, ‘Ekonomikum’ is the department for business and economics
study at Uppsala University. I was admitted there to study my master in Business
and Management. I still remember my first day of orientation there. I went
there wearing super casual stuff (don’t really remember what exactly but casual
stuff for sure) and boy was I surprised to see how fashionable students were
there. Everyone had their own unique
style, looked rich; not to mention literally everyone owned an apple laptop. And
I was there with an Acer which I am
still using today and casual clothes on. Felt pretty left out not going to lie.

However,
another matter was that I was completely new to this University whereas a lot
of students were already studying their bachelor there and then got admission
the same master studies as me. Hence almost all of them sort of knew each other
or had their own group of friends. Not to mention, almost 70% were Swedish students
in the whole class which reduced to 80% when we started taking classes for our
own tracks. I remember that it was only me and one Chinese guy who were among
the international ones, and everybody else was Swedish. I didn’t really enjoy
that specially because I was studying and living in a multinational environment
in Borlänge where I had my undergraduate studies. Having said that, I did try
my best to become friends with my Swedish classmates in Uppsala but it was just
hard. I think it’s safe to say that Swedish people aren’t really social if they
aren’t drunk. I did think my classmates were pretty nice and cool when I worked
with them in groups but it was too hard to break that certain boundary and
become good friends with them. Hence most of us remained classmates. On the
other hand, I was good friends with three dudes; one from Ghana, one from Nigeria,
and One from Ethiopia. I knew the guy from Nigeria from my bachelor studies; we
were in the same class. Not really in touch with them though which is kind of
sad but I still remember them and the good times we had and miss them. I’m sure
all of them are pretty busy in their own lives now but I do hope they remember
and miss me too.

However, getting
back to the fashion part; I decided to buy a bunch of nice new fashionable clothes
to wear to my classes. I started to think that I’m not going to wear the same
outfit over and over again. I’ll buy clothes every two weeks if I have to. Well
guess what, a tiny detail, I didn’t have a job back then so wasn’t really
thinking everything through when I was planning all of that. As a result of
course my plan didn’t work out and at one point I didn’t really care. I do
think that we should wear presentable clothes but those clothes don’t necessarily
have to be new every day or every other week. The most important thing is to
have a good attitude on, to be social, respectful, and nice; if I can’t carry
all of that then carrying new and expensive clothes wouldn’t do much of a big
difference, now would it? Also speaking of having an apple laptop, well I did
want to have that at one point but I decided not to have it just because
everybody else has it. Basically we shouldn’t do something just because everybody
else was doing that instead we should do whatever that’s comfortable for us and
makes us happy.

Last but
not least, studying at Uppsala was really a dream come true because my father
really wanted me to study there. It is one of the best Universities in Sweden
and among the top 100th worldwide. Undoubtedly it was a privilege to
study there and having that awesome student life experience. This is one of the many interesting stories I
have from my life in Uppsala.

Last but
not least, studying at Uppsala was really a dream come true because my father
really wanted me to study there. It is one of the best Universities in Sweden
and among the top 100th worldwide. Undoubtedly it was a privilege to
do my master there and having that awesome student life experience in that
beautiful city. I could do anything to go back to that life again. This is one
of the many interesting stories I have from my life in Uppsala.